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description= There is nothing like a tomato sandwich now and then. -- Harriet the Spy;

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ext thing my schedule has been dialed back from everything is on fire to there is a lot to do and also it is 82 and sunny and mister softee is on my block and the forthcoming long weekend is the rest for the wicked to which i aspire 4 comments from my so called life the long goodbye april 24 2021 tags work yesterday was my last day monday i start a whole different kind of toymaking i am the one who made this declaration drew the line in the sand with my pencil i need it to be true it s not quite true or it will never happen on thursday i got a goodbye email the official announcement of my departure that isn t really a departure but more of a metamorphosis i am entering a new cocoon it was unexpected not the email itself but the many contributors to it i am being remembered by the people whose opinions most matter to me for the things i have done that have mattered to me most my favorite toys the ways i have chosen to make them the things i ve done to try to make our business of toymaking better fairer i feel like my colleagues have seen into the windows of my soul like i ve brought my entire self to this job i have brought my entire self to this job and it s why it s so hard to let go i feel very much myself i don t think i m explaining it well i feel like i have been seen as the person i feel i am at my core and appreciated for being just that person everyone should have this i will be carrying it with me for a long time as i told the person who put the email together i am saving it for all of the many days i will be feeling slow and stupid in the coming weeks i have also received dozens of messages of thanks and good wishes some from people i have never met or even heard of i realized i ve done something i d hoped i had but i wasn t sure i feel like i don t deserve it and also i am proud of myself damn it the flip side of this is that i am also slow and stupid i am struggling to understand what i am supposed to be doing and how i am supposed to be doing it but whatever it is i need to be doing it immediately i feel like i m doing nothing but ask questions every answer is another piece of the puzzle but it s still a half empty mosaic i am focusing on the wrong things nearly missing deadlines making mistake after mistake i remind myself it is part of the process fortunately i have several colleagues in exactly the same boat unfortunately we are all used to being the best at what we do and we are overcompensating which is intimidating from the outside and tends to make you feel like you are the only one who is not able to keep up my first days at the toy factory were a lot like this i didn t understand 80 of what happened in any given meeting i didn t know what i was supposed to be doing and certainly not what i was supposed to be doing first many days i was waiting for someone to say i m sorry we made a mistake pack up your things and go better luck next time but i started in on the things i understood and gradually connected the pieces between the things i knew and didn t i built this expertise i will build it again i need to keep remembering that and also i chose this buck up private is something i ve said to myself more than once this week i have said goodbye to my advisors to the people i manage some of whom i will still be working with but in a different way goodbye to my sacred cows and my unfinished projects the embarrassing cobwebs and the tasks i ve been avoiding the hardest goodbye was with the person i work most closely with a mentor and a friend too more like family really he told me he was proud of me and told me to remember there are many many people who care about me and will support or help me if i say the word i m not sure if that s true or if what he means is that he would either way it s a gift i did not anticipate he is the one person who didn t send me an email he told me what he wanted to say in july i will have been at the toy factory for ten years and will get a certificate and a clock or a pen or a set of steak knives none of that recognition matters but this does more than i could have imagined goodbye goodbye goodbye and monday hello 3 comments from my so called life you go down smooth april 9 2021 every morning for the last week i have awakened at 4 30 or 5 am with you go down smooth by lake street dive in my head most mornings i shove my earbuds in my ears find my slippiest slippers and crank it up for a silent solo dance party before the sun is up before i lace up my running shoes the opening riff is lurking just below my surface all day a rapid heartbeat that s chomping at the bit to get faster that s my frequency right now i am resigned to it i may be enjoying it it goes down smooth it s not that the work has eased up the opposite is probably true but somehow it s okay people have been understanding i m getting a surprising amount of control not only over my own time but also over what i m leaving behind i make recommendations and for the most part they say yes and yes and also yes this is the first time i have been in a position to leave something like a legacy it s nice to be able to arrange the furniture the way i want it before i go i know someone will move the chairs eventually but there s a floorplan of what i ve accomplished and that means something to me we are sliding into spring with a sneeze and a sleeping cat on the sun warmed stoop the cherries and magnolias have exploded in the last week the light is different we sit on the front porch when it s a little too cold to do so and pretend it is warmer last weekend there was a birthday party in the park and i came home puzzled from my achy face and ribs until i realized that it was from smiling and laughing more than i have in months there are jazz bands on porches and there s baseball in the park one night this week i took the subway for the first time in over a year and walked down vanderbilt avenue to a friend s house and sat in her backyard with wine and snacks and a firepit and it almost felt like before the neighborhood is waking up i saw the young couple who moved in next door for the first time in months jaguar and i are back to our routine of sitting on the stoop after work she has regular visitors some children who love to pet her on their way to the playground that finally opened on the next block after years of renovation there s an older couple too i see her face light up from the other end of the block oh my jaguar she says when she arrives we always wait for her i was hoping you would be there the guy who plays neil young out of a speaker on his bike is back rolling by against traffic a couple of times a day i miss my neighbor louise though we d always sit on our front porches on sunny days and yell about the weather our hearing wasn t what it used to be and she d always slip her wall street journal on our porch after she was through with it because she knows that mr spy is a writer and reads things she died just before christmas peacefully asleep in the house she grew up in it s a hole like a gap in your teeth you can t stop worrying with your tongue she d left her clothesline out in the back a single mask clipped with a peg it was there for months and then one afternoon looking out my kitchen window i caught her nephew who is taking care of the building standing and looking at it for a long while before pocketing the peg and mask and moving on with his day she is still with us sometimes the lights are on in her apartment and sometimes they are not things are changing have already changed but there s an ease to it a gracefulness i haven t felt in years it goes down smooth 2 comments from my so called life i used to see her all the time april 3 2021 tags work apparently i am someone who likes to if not actually burn bridges at least roll them up behind her because up until now whenever i ve changed jobs really changed jobs from doing one thing and then doing something different not just adding a couple of more responsibilities i ve not only left the company but left the industry entirely as a result i m finding my current experience at the toy factory a bit unexpected there are definite advantages to being hired by the same place you are working already you will know at least some people you ll understand the culture and probably some of the procedures and you will also be able to ease into a transition you don t have to have a panicky brain dump before you leave because you re still in the thick of it but here s the thing i m learning these are all also disadvantages or at least points to be wary of my relationships with the people i know are changing and all of my conversations are a little awkward and the people i don t know are digging for information about me as i would surely do in their shoes several people have asked me what you re like one of my current colleagues who used to work in the department i m heading to told me i m thinking i ll tell them you re a heartless ogre she laughed that s perfect i said set the bar low and i don t know as much about the culture and procedures as i thought i did there is nuance i couldn t see before the way the ocean looks blue until you get up close to it distinctions that aren t especially evident from outside the new area look like a major cultural shift as i try to climb inside it the work is similar but there are new layers to it a new language for talking about it and their thinking focuses on different things it s eye opening and it also makes me feel like i don t know what the hell i m doing and compared to my new colleagues i don t i mean there are four people on my team that collectively have worked here for just under 150 years this is exactly what i signed on for after ten years in one place i m ready for a shakeup but it s humbling especially in a business based on expertise to move from being a long proven expert i m now having to prove myself over and over again daily i feel stupid and slow and also very very wide awake i can sense the gears in my brain mapping the new terrain i like that feeling but it s exhausting on the days where i wasn t working until 10 30 this week i crashed between 7 and 8 several days this week i forgot to have lunch all my routines are out the window even the easy transition may not be so easy without a firm line a departure date a bridge to pull up will i ever finish crossing things off my lists and do i want to the expertise i have on one side his helping power me through the lack of it on the other to remember how i got here once i roll up that bridge there will be no turning back it s not just expertise but my sense of identity too for ten years i ve been firmly a creative a toymaker but now i m something of a spokesperson for toymakers with one foot on the creative side and another in the business itself and in so doing i ve given up a piece of the work that means a great deal to me personally i can still do it but it won t be part of my job i need to commit some of my personal time to it figuring this out made me realize how utterly remarkable it has been to have a job for a decade that met most of my personal and professional needs but it doesn t anymore this still feels like the right move i m getting exactly what i signed up for by 4 pm friday i could barely form complete sentences so even though i popped up saturday morning at 5 am thinking about all the things i wanted to find out i am committed to letting them be for at least today to giving my brain a chance to unhook from the effort i am glad to have that feeling of wanting to jump in with both feet even if at the moment it is largely fueled by fear i haven t had that for a while and i ve missed it only two days to monday 2 comments from my so called life fox confessor brings the flood march 27 2021 last night i dreamed i could call foxes when i needed them when i was lost or alone i would look towards the nearest woods and in a minute or two a fox would dart wildly out of the trees and come to rest sitting at my feet and let me pat its copper head once i was climbing a steep and slippery hill surrounded by walls of smooth black stone it was dark and rainy and there was nothing to hold onto but a fox came a sat with me for a few minutes and i felt calm and remembered the way big changes are happening at the toy factory at the moment they are good changes both for the toy factory and for me but also unsettling in the way big changes always are and something i ve been saying i wanted finally happened and now i have to climb a steep and hopefully not too slippery hill and move on to the next thing last night the stress of the last few weeks hit me like a wall and suddenly the weight of the whole last year came crashing down on me up until now i think i hadn t fully recognized the toll it s taken on me i m someone who likes a lot of quiet who likes being home who s partnered and thus has not been totally alone i ve enjoyed many of the changes to my daily life but after a day of 7 straight hours of telling people i care about that changes that are happening to me will be affecting them something just broke i miss my family i miss everyone i miss hugging people i miss sitting in the back room of freddy s bar with a pint of cider and a jumble of instruments and playing music with my friends i miss leaning against the subway car door that says not to lean on it listening to a new album and reading a new book i miss walking up 35 th street in the morning with the sun in my eyes i miss watching the jugglers in bryant park i miss the wall of books in my office the way i sometimes forget to push the elevator button the steam rising up from the manhole cover at the corner of fifth avenue that smells like something growing in the back of my kid s closet i miss the way the jamaican bus driver says good morning i miss the skeleton slumped over the picnic table between the fdr and the river i miss walking through the empire state building lobby to buy a salad for lunch and that restaurant in korea town where you have to take off your shoes and everyone can see that you need new socks i miss being squished around one of their sunken tables surrounded by soft pillows and people who want to argue about music i miss having lunch on a bench on a secret terrace with my friend m the smell from the coffee cart of its proprieter making a baconeggandcheese and the sound of standing in the middle of the library room at the morgan library and just listening foxes have always loomed large in my personal mythology i m not sure where that comes from but they always show up when i need them they seem to be a stand in for wisdom for guidance to help me find where i am going they are wild things that seem tame i ve been thinking about making a job change for a while now in july i will have been at the toy factory for 10 years it feels like time last fall i asked for the chance to participate in a mentoring program that would take me outside my comfort zone outside the business in fact and help...